Tracking assets and managing inventory are vital in today's growing economy system. New products are developed constantly and are placed in the market for consumers to purchase. The increasing number of products needs to be managed efficiently by business people (retailers, wholesalers, market executes) while receiving, shipping, and storing the products in a warehouse.
Traditionally, tracking assets and managing inventory in retail supply chain or manufacturing units or service units heavily depend on manual scanning of barcodes printed on each product. The manual scanning becomes monotonous as the number of products increase and hence time consuming. To overcome limitations of the manual process, smart tags, like passive RFID, which broadcast corresponding to locations, are used. Other methods to track assets involve using QR codes and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. Further, RFID-based solutions can record location of assets, usage of assets and generate various reports manually and automatically. Further, RFID solution is fast, secure and reliable resulting in tremendous gain in Return on Investment (ROI). However, a number of asset management procedures (or processes), for example DRMO/Disposal process, Recycle process, Spare Lockers procedure, check-out and check-in process are manually performed. As a result, the asset management procedures are not only tedious but are also ineffective. Further, the asset management procedures and do not provide complete accountability.
From the foregoing, it may be appreciated by those skilled in the art that a need has arrived for a system and method to completely automate the process of RFID asset tracking and Inventory management providing the user with a one stop program.